Jessie
by sammispn226
Summary: Girl!Jesse. Walt may finally have his empire, and Mike may finally have his stable job, but there's one point of their triangle who will never settle.
1. Chapter 1

She's striding through the hall, pissed like only Jessie can get pissed at Walt, at least openly. Mike is standing by when she bursts into the wood-paneled office, marching straight to Walt's desk. _Here we go, _Mike thinks.

"You did it, didn't you," she seethes, breathing hard. "Don't try to deny it!"

Walt gazes at her from his chair, and no one moves. Mike's lost count of the number of times Jessie and Walt have fought in public. She's the only one who could start a public fight with a six-state drug kingpin and walk away without a scratch.

"Everyone leave us," Walt orders calmly, still regarding Jessie. The two stay frozen, eyes battling, Walt silent, Jessie heaving, as the guards file out. Mike waits til last, watching the two until he steps out and closes the thick mahogany door.

Outside he can year Jessie's yells transition to more normal tones until he can't make out even a whisper of the conversation. It's always like this. Eventually Jessie will storm out, still furious, and everyone will go back to work, including Jessie herself.

Sometimes Mike finds himself wondering at their relationship. How, he asks himself, could the most powerful - and most image-controlling - drug lord of the southwest allow himself to be yelled at by an upstart pipsqueak, a girl who shouldn't even be in this business in the first place? Any one else would have been shot (or more quietly done away with) long ago.

But this time's different. A scream breaks out and Mike shoves his way back into the office to see Jessie holding a shaking gun at Walt and looking terrified. Mike whips out his own weapon. Fond as he is of Jessie, it _is_ his job to take out threats just like the one she is right now.

But Walt has the situation under control, like he always does. He's speaking lowly and slowly, backing Jessie up against a wall. She's almost crying, and Mike can see from across the room that Walt has a snowball's chance in hell of getting shot right now. She'll capitulate any second, which is what keeps Mike from even pulling his own weapon. The other guys crowd in the doorway, taking their lead from him.

"…you owe me an apology, Jessie," Walt is saying. He's using that tone that Mike doesn't hear him use often, except with her. Commanding, authoritative, but soft, compelling. "You ruined a full 14 percent of last week's batch."

Jessie shakes her head, crying for real now but still holding the gun between them as if it's actually a threat. "Come on," she says, pleading. "You know we've got more than enough to keep us going this week."

"That's not the _point_, Jessie," Walt switches smoothly into his teacher voice. "Quotas are set for a reason." The rest is drowned out as he leans in and talks in her ear, invading her space. Finally the capitulation Mike's been waiting for hits and she shoves the handgun into Walt's chest, dodging him and storming out of the room, tears sliding down her face.

Walt turns to Mike, idly examining the gun in his hand. "Make sure she gets home okay."

Everyone goes back to work. Mike never even found off what set her off this time.


	2. Chapter 2

She's striding down the hall, clipped but cold and composed. Mike nods as she approaches but she barely glances. Since business really took off, and Walt really settled into his role as king of the southwest, things haven't been the same. Mike used to feel like he and Jessie were on the same team, united by their manipulation of and by Walt. Now they're just – what, coworkers?

Jessie breezes past and makes a beeline for Walt's desk but jerks to a stop, upright, staring hard into his face. She's not acting like usual. Mike focuses. Something's different. Jessie's usually lazy, casual, carefree or resentful.

Walt is acting different too. He's not giving off waves of blanketing authority, but glaring up at her with the murderous look that rears its ugly face when he is really and vilely enraged. They both know something explosive, Mike can tell. He tenses, mentally visualizing the places on his body where his guns are stored.

But Walt just glares and waits, ready to pounce, but waiting for Jessie to fall into her own trap like she always does.

"I gave it all away."

"You gave away an _entire_ batch?" Walt snarls, eyes bulging. He's about to launch into one of his ranting lectures, but –

"I quit. I gave the shit to Geraldo to distribute. I'm out." Jessie's voice is flat. Short.

But Mike watches Walt. He doesn't dare hope Jessie's actually going to follow through with this. The conversations they had, about getting out, about getting back to real lives… they seem so distant now. Like different lives altogether.

Even Walt falters, if only for a second. "You can't just _quit_, there's-"

"I'm out." That's the second time she's cut him off. Mike tenses even more and reaches halfway for the glock on his hip, hoping he can block both of them from harm if needs be.

Then before he believes it, Jessie's pulling a tarnished handgun from the pocket of her ratty red hoodie. Mike whips his own out and aims for her head – "Jessie," he starts -

But this infuriating girl, the one that once spit egg on his jacket she was laughing so hard, who sang N*sync songs in his goddamn car, this girl that got under his skin more than he ever wanted, she ignores his warning.

The weapon dangling loosely at her side, she takes a step forward, leans over the desk, and closes in on Walt, never breaking his gaze. Slowly, she lifts the gun and sets it down between them with a clunk. She spins it a fraction of a turn, its handle now facing her boss. Walt hasn't moved an inch, glaring but watching.

"Shoot me, then," she says softly.

Mike freezes, gun still aimed. Even he knows this is too much of a gamble with Walt. Jessie can yell at him, disobey him, but no one overrules him.

But it looks like Jessie knows Walt better than he does. In a curt move, she turns away from him and marches out the door without a glance at Mike, his trigger arm still held awkwardly aloft. He hears an engine roar within moments, then tires squealing, giving lie to some of her composure in the office.

Walt contemplates the gun in his hand, its metal too dark and old to reflect any light from his fine mahogany office. He doesn't say anything. _She just got away with it,_ Mike thinks.


	3. Chapter 3

Mike knows Walt has been trying to bring Jessie back into the fold.

Only in private, though. What would everyone think if they knew. Knew the king was begging a pawn to come back to him.

Jessie holds out.


	4. Chapter 4

The door swings open and she marches in, flanked by two guys Mike only vaguely knows. They don't touch her but it's clear she's been brought against her will. It's been a while since Mike first decided he was too old for this shit.

"I need you to cook again," Walt is saying. Jessie looks defiant but tense.

Mike knows the cartel's output has dipped in the wake of Jessie's departure. The new cooks are doing their best, but it takes time to perfect a technique to the level of Walt and Jessie's product.

"The product isn't blue," Walt says. "Blue is our _brand_. Our customers in the Czech Republic-"

Jessie doesn't look convinced. "I told you I'm out," she says, more softly than Mike expected. "I can't do this anymore."

Walt is still talking, but Mike tunes him out. He's sure Walt's got excuses stored up his ass and with more to spare. He watches Jessie. He hasn't seen her since that dramatic resignation, and as much as he hates to admit it, he wants to think her life has gotten better since she got out from under Walt's thumb. She looks tired, probably from Walt's constant requests and admonitions and complaints. But sort of… healthy. She's not on anything, that's clear. She never should have gotten into this business in the first place, Mike thinks, not for the first time.

Finally, Walt sighs and gets up from his chair. The guys who escorted Jessie inside grab her arms, forcing her to her knees on the expensive rug. One takes out his handgun and holds it against her head.

Mike tenses but doesn't move. Walt hadn't said it would get to this… level. Jessie, for her part, is shaking slightly but somehow doesn't seem surprised. She never tears her gaze from Walt.

"Do it, then," she challenges, though her composure starting to fall apart. "Fucking kill me! That's what you brought me out here for, isn't it? In case I say no?"

Walt crouches before her on the rug. "This is your last chance," he says evenly. "I need you to cook for me."

Silence. Jessie stares at floor for a while before resignedly shaking her head. "You know I can't do that." Her voice becomes pleading as she looks up at him, asking for forgiveness even now while he's holding her life in his hands. "I'm sorry, Mr. White."

Walt exchanges a glance with a man off to the side, who flicks on a TV screen.


	5. Chapter 5

The screen shows a girl - a young woman, really - and a boy, zoomed in close so you can only see their heads, a few feet away from each other. Jessie goes still. She seems so surprised she's confused.

"You… you…"

"Jessie."

She shakes her head. "You wouldn't do this." She looks at him beseechingly. "You…"

The camera zooms out to show the two people's torsos, bound to chairs. Mike notices what he hadn't in the first two seconds: they look terrified. A gun enters the frame from the bottom right.

Jessie bursts into a wordless scream, bucking wildly against the men holding her. "DON'T YOU- DON'T YOU FUCKING- YOU- FUCK-" The guards have to leverage their weight to keep her on her knees. Walt, though, stays unperturbed, crouched before her.

"I need you," he enunciates carefully, but not cruelly, "to cook for me."

Jessie stares at him, aghast. She looks utterly ruined. She's stopped fighting, her limbs and jaw hanging slack. "You wouldn't do this." But she sounds like she's begging, begging Walt to tell her this is somehow all not happening. Mike is riveted. The two never break eye contact, as if Jessie were dangling from a cliff with only Walt keeping her from falling. "Don't do this – to – me-" her voice breaks up and Mike can tell she's having trouble dragging breath into her lungs.

"We have a lab downstairs."

Jessie gives a sharp, quiet little cry and turns away from him.

"It will be perfectly safe."

She's crying for real now, still breathing unevenly. She drags her gaze to the screen, where the two people are still struggling silently against the sheets strapping them to what look like dining room chairs. _Just like Walt_, Mike thinks grimly, _to set up a tableau like a mafia movie. _

"That would be worse," Jessie chokes out. "Worse than Gus. You would- you wouldn't do this to me. Not to me." She looks back up at him. "Please… just let me go." She says it softly, brokenly, hopefully, like she's asking Walt for the most precious thing in the world. "Just let me go, Mr. White." Her voice breaks and is so quiet Mike can barely hear. She's still staring at him, dangling from that cliff.

Walt stands. "You can start tomorrow."

Jessie bursts into tears as the faceless men drag her to her feet. She's sobbing, her gaze still fixated on the screen as she's dragged out.

Walt turns to Mike. "Let them go."


	6. Chapter 6

Mike rolls up the dusty drive leading to the center of their operations, a warehouse on the outskirts of Albuquerque. Walt insists on calling it "the office."

Jessie is leaning against a corner of its corrugated tin wall, smoking. She looks like the fucked-up, spaced-out, miserable little kid that used to follow Walt around in a stupor. She doesn't look like she's slept since the showdown the day before. Cigarette butts litter the dust in a circle around her.

She raises her eyes just enough to watch Mike and Walt exit the car. Walt acknowledges her presence but proceeds inside without a word. Mike hesitates, as if he's going to say "welcome back" or he doesn't know the fuck what.

Jessie takes a deep drag on her cigarette and puts it out. She follows Walt inside, shoulders still hunched and hands still balled in the pockets of her dirty sweatshirt. She doesn't look at Mike. She's a far cry, he thinks, from the confident young woman who once challenged Walter White to kill her.


	7. Chapter 7

The warehouse has an underground lab, shiny and high-tech. Mike's pretty sure Walt modeled it after the lab where he and Jessie toiled in near slavery, but he's never brought it up.

He steps down a spiral staircase made of the warehouse's thin metal, his footsteps ringing loud and his hand gripping the rail with what he won't admit is nervousness. He's not sure why he's approaching his old partner, but felt like he couldn't... not. Now that they're both trapped, again, in Walt's world, the world they'd once promised each other to escape.

Jessie is silently, sullenly collecting plastic bins and carrying them to another counter. She doesn't acknowledge him.

"Did you do it?" her voice comes out at him suddenly.

"What?"

She starts to turn toward him, but stops, still addressing the space left of him. Her voice sounds dead but still somehow sounds angry. Her head is bowed and it looks like her shoulders are never going to unclench. "Did you kidnap them?"

Mike has always prided himself on his honesty. Doesn't mean he can't feel bad about it. "Yeah. I gave the order."

She jerks her plastic bins up off the counter and spins away from him. "Stay the _fuck_ away from me."

Mike notices a photo of the young woman and the boy – her son, he's guessing by now – that someone had clipped to a shelf. A threatening reminder, or a magnanimous gift. You never knew, with the twisted mind that fucker had.


	8. Chapter 8

Mike is descending the spiral staircase again, but he pauses on the first step. He hears noises. It couldn't be –

He cranes his head around the banister and sees them – Jessie and Walt, shoved up against the far counter. Her head is down, so Mike can't see her face, but he can hear the small grunts she's making with Walt's every thrust. Walt is curved over her, wrapping her body in an embrace and craning his head over her neck. Thank Jesus in his fucking cradle they aren't facing Mike.

He backtracks so fast his heel catches on the metal turreted stair, and for a moment Jessie's head snaps up toward him. But Mike is up and out, closing the lab's hidden door as silently as possible. His mind reels with memories of Jessie and Walt's relationship. The first time Walt approached him for help. The time Jessie dodged between him and Mike's gun.

So many things, which Mike had written off as codependency, were making more sense now. Their inexplicable attachment to each other, their unwillingness to screw the other over.

Mike remembers the one time he showed up unannounced at Jessie's house, in the middle of the night. Their long day of pickups had not gone well, to say the least, and Mike was fulfilling the either half of his job. He was checking she wasn't using again. But instead it was Walt who answered the door, unkempt and angry.

"What?" he snapped.

Mike paused, surprised and suspicious. "I came to see Jessie."

The two men eyed each other across the doorway, both aware that they were caught in an unusual place at an unusual time of night. Walt closed the door slightly, it's opening blocked effectively by his body. He was wearing only an undershirt. Warning signals were beeping quietly in Mike's brain.

"She's fine," Walt said finally. "I checked on her myself."

Mike wanted to check. He wanted to sweep Jessie's house for - he didn't know what - but it's dark and silent and the middle of the goddamn night, and really, what right does he have? Beyond that, what obligation does he have? It's not his problem, Mike had told himself. It's not his problem.


	9. Chapter 9

Jessie is standing a ways out, smoking a cigarette, hunched against the wind and staring out at the desert. She absently scuffs the dirt with her sneaker, a tic Mike had always derided as adolescent.

"Does he make you?" The words come out harsh and gruff, and so sudden they surprise Mike himself.

Jessie startles. "Of course he fucking makes me." She looks at him like he's crazy. "You were fucking there."

For a split second, Mike feels nauseous and unable to breath. Walt was forcing – how could he not have known - she had seen him – wait. "You saw me?"

She backs up a step and looks at him like he's really gone batshit now. "You were fuckin' standing in the corner with all the rest of those shitheads. You attacked my fucking _friends_, Mike." She jabs the cigarette at him and a centimeter a ash falls pitifully into the dust. It's the most emotion she's shown in weeks.

Mike breathes a little easier, then tries again. He shifts to look out at the murky brown horizon. "No." Goddamn, he's such a fucking coward. Can't even look at her. "Does he… force you..." His tone and the recency of the event are enough to complete his sentence for her.

"That was you!" She looks stricken. "No. I-" she flounders. "He doesn't – I mean – it's… it's not…"

Mike had prepared himself for a wrenching "yes" or even an appalled "no." He doesn't know what to make of Jessie's answer. Like every other time he's tried to pry his way into this fucked up relationship his old partners have, he feels like he couldn't be more on the outside.


	10. Chapter 10

When Mike pulls to a stop, dust levitates to the height of the old car's wheels but neither notice. Jessie's been staring out the window the whole drive. It's like old times, except even the uneasy truce they had in those days will never be reached again.

Finally, her eyes turn and seem to focus. They're at a bus station. More dust, more metal, more loneliness on the outskirts of town. Not too different from the office, really. An old Greyhound, gunmetal gray and blindingly reflective in the noontime light, pulls up. Jessie looks at him quizzically.

"Get out," he grumbles. They meet where heat is radiating off the car hood he hands her a bus ticket. She stares at it like she can't figure out what it is. "Get out of here," he says.

She takes it. He turns to examine at the idling buses, even now too much of a coward to look her in the face. "It's to Alaska."

For a long moment, she stares at the ticket and he stares at the horizon. He thinks, _she might really go back to him_. She might crawl back into the car and go back to that man who took everything from her, bit by bit, until there was nothing left in her life but him.

Neither of them say a word. Eventually, gripping the thick slip of paper, Jessie turns. She walks in slow motion, like she's sleepwalking, and Mike knows it's the last time he'll see her. Walking away.


End file.
